


The Silver Moon

by Snicole25



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Alienages (Dragon Age), Apostates (Dragon Age), Brecilian Forest (Dragon Age), City Elves, Culture Shock, Dalish Elves, Denerim (Dragon Age), F/F, F/M, Family Secrets, Father Figures, Haven (Dragon Age), Kirkwall (Dragon Age), M/M, Mages, Magic, Major Original Character(s), Mama Drama, Minor Dalish Trauma, POV Original Character, POV Original Female Character, Rebirth, Reincarnation, Self-Insert, Shapeshifting, Skyhold (Dragon Age), Uncomfortable Truths, Werewolf childhood, Werewolves, Wolf Pack, total lack of social grace
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23242039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snicole25/pseuds/Snicole25
Summary: To be reborn is like finally reaching the climatic chapter of your favorite novel, only for it to not be your novel at all . . . Or a book . . . Or your language even. Rebirth is thinking that you know exactly where your next step will land and then find you’ve been swimming this whole time and how do I even know what it’s like to run?Or alternatively:Being a werewolf would've been a hell of a lot better if I'd gotten a tail out of it.
Relationships: Anders (Dragon Age)/Original Female Character(s), Donnic Hendyr/Aveline Vallen, Female Inquisitor/Sera, Fen'Harel | Solas/Original Female Character(s), Fenris/Male Hawke, Iron Bull/Dorian Pavus, Iron Bull/Original Female Character(s), Leliana/Male Tabris (Dragon Age)
Kudos: 18





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Any questions will be answered at the end of the next chapter.
> 
> I do not own Dragon Age.

I’m . . . _different_.

And I shouldn’t be, because as a tiny fluffed up pup I’ve only really seen the outside through whatever sun can filter down through the crumblier areas of the den. _I shouldn’t know anything else,_ but . . . sometimes when I see the stone shapes I want to call them _statues_ and sometimes when Our Lady whispers kind words and ruffles my ears, I see dark pupil-less eyes and cold green flesh and lean away because . . . because _she’s not something_ , although she’s never been anything other than herself and . . . _and what is a human? Why is her not being one so frightening?_

The _offness_ grows as I do, worming its way until the occasional _word in a language I’ve never heard before_ is slipping off my tongue right along with the grunts and growls. _Hi’s_ and _Bye’s_ and _Whoops’s_ popping up to sprinkle conversations with either confusion or alarm. My dreams mix flat, furless faces with the furry and warm as they romp, hunt and wriggle into piles. Sometimes, when relieving myself in the pit of the furthest cavern, an image of a glistening white _thing_ will hit and _I miss indoor plumbing so much, what-_

I’ve just found my first hidden passage when all those feelings combine into a new level of _okay, so . . . what the fudge?_ Mama’s wedged herself in one of the lesser travelled chambers and I’m exploring with Bramba when it turns out the stone figure ( _woman)_ in the corner _can vanish the stone we’re standing on-_ and as something called _cause and effect_ would merit, the two of us are tumbled down a dirt tunnel and onto the sparse grass of the outside.

Words – _Trees, Snow, Sky_ – smack into my mind with every brand new thing to wonder at, but it’s the _singing_ that stops my sniffing dead. To date in my short existence, the only _music_ I’d experienced had been the crooning howls of a pack in mourning, but this… Well, this was unlike even the rhythmic humming of Mama on her best day, a language more lyrical than the one I did and did not remember, and so hauntingly smooth that the notes bordered on … _entrancing_ , somehow. Even though _I do not know how to climb a tree_ , I coax Bramba away from something spiky and the color of his fur ( _a pinecone_ ) and up into the low hanging branches anyway. Instinct takes us up and . . . there are wooden shapes _sailing_ amongst the trees _._ Like, actual _boats for an actual sea (What is a boat? What is a sea? How could that much water even exist??)_ pulled by prey ( _deer)_ with antlers that flash white when they pass through the speckled shade. One of the closer singers pauses to toss a smaller singer _giggling into the air_ and . . . and _painful familiarity_ nearly knocks me off the tree _._

These beings look more and more familiar the longer I study them, until only the ears don’t really match _the_ _image that is only just out of reach_. Not because they’re furless and pushed to the side, no. What is more alarming is that _mine were so much rounder_.

Because even as a gangly little floof, I realize that this is not a thought born from lack of knowledge. This is not _I didn’t know ears could be shaped like that_ or _I’ve never seen prey walk like us before_. This distinct, iron-clad _fact_ is _I looked like them once_ , WAS _one of them_ _if not for just one detail_ and . . . and _I don’t understand! I’m not like them, I’m a-_

The sensation of milk teeth sinking into my arm startles me so much that I snarl and snap without really _thinking_ , and both Bramba and I plummet a few branches before I manage to dig claws deep enough into the bark to slow us entirely. I hiss in a shaky gasp of air only to realize that it’s the first real breath of at least the past few minutes. My tremble is for very different reasons than the body pressed to my side. _Panic attack?_ Haven’t had one of those since . . . _Since never, I have no idea what that is. I’m just a pup. What the hell is ‘Mental Health’? I don’t understand, what-_

The air is too still. I’ve just barely registered the _quiet_ ( _no song, no steady movement_ ) before large claws hook into our scruffs and the _thwang_ of something fast and sharp digs into _where we_ _just were_. _My_ _fangs grind as I’m tossed onto a very familiar smelling back_ , given barely a second to cling to tawny fur before the body below launches upward to avoid the next _thwunk_ in the wood.

“ _Silver, Bramba,_ _you left the den. Why? Watching the hunters is dangerous.”_

“ _One of the stone faces moved. We . . . fell._ ” I press into the warmth of his fur, already _safe_ despite the fast-sharp things still whistling in the air. Bulfa lands near us in a gangly crouch, his frame still youthful enough that his hold on his brother ( _whatever a Bridal Carry was)_ became slightly awkward. Three wolves lope at his heels. “ _They made a. . . Nice howl? No, not a howl. A sound? They made a pretty sound._ ” The last fast-sharp hits further than the one before, followed by faint lyrical muttering, and then that very song is carrying on the breeze as their land boats creak away. ( _And it is so pretty. I want to hear it in every dream._ )

“ _Hunters need to go to their sleep site before dark. That’s good luck, didn’t want to avoid them all-”_

“ _’M sorry!_ ” The whimpery whine draws to where Bramba is very much defined by the droop of his shaggy ears. “ _Hunters scary, Silver not move! It not safe, I. . . I b-bit her. She snarled! We fell cuz of me! ‘M sorry!! Hunters heards us cuz of me.”_

I chuff at him and get a yelp with a nip before pinning him to groom out the sap. ( _And he’s a sap too, whatever that means. Apologizing for breaking a breakdown? I mean, really.)_

“ _Thanks for biting,_ ” I grunt. “ _You my Bramba, we friends_ yes?” The two adults ( _or almost adult in Bulfa’s case_ ) chuff too, but then one of the wolves sticks her nose to the brush so it’s ok. Soon our little group pushes past a crumbling archway and scrambles across what my mind helpfully supplies as _most likely a stairway_. It’s not really a route we know, but that’s not good enough to stop me wiggling around NimbleFoot to take the lead. S _mells of water, pack, and safety. No danger. Good place, very good place_. I nip and pull at Bramba’s ears. “ _Others are here, wanna play? Wrestle?”_

“ _Where? Where?_ ” The crush of pups chant as a sudden and swarming wave of furry bodies rushes to pull us under. _“Bramba gone, Silver gone. Where ya go? Where?”_ Bramba supplies ‘ _outside’_ and then teeth are nipping and I’m pinning and Bramba’s romping and we’re both still giving answers despite it all. “ _What it like? What a sky? Was cold? See prey? How? HOW? Howhowhowhowhow!”_

“ _Big. Pretty. Yes. Yes. Fell. Stone face moved. Fell in hole. FELL!”_

“ _Come, Silver_.” Wriggling fruitlessly in a heavy pile of exhausted pups, NimbleFoot chuffs faux pity and pulls me free. I snuggle into the soft fur of his collar and get a ride for the effort. It ends with a gentle toss onto speckled fur and a new cavern without the fresh air and soft moonlight of the last one. “ _I found your pup outside. She’s good now, could’ve been worse. Watch her, get sleep.”_ It’s an order, but it’s also not to me so I just turn my circles and burrow in.

Mama doesn’t react _._ _Still a bad day then?_ She also doesn’t stop me. _Getting better._

“Night!” My cheerful cry knocks a hiss of air from NimbleFoot _._ Suddenly Mama is much too rigid to be a comfortable . . . _Pillow? Mattress? No! Stop the words!_ And then I’m regretting everything when one jerk sends me tumbling to the stone. The snarl above me is a blinding showcase of wickedly sharp teeth as NimbleFoot’s lips pull back just that bit more than they should. He looms like something called a _Lovecraftian Horror_ and, in the resulting tangle of _full blown terror_ and _very sensible adrenaline_ , I whimper and promptly flip the hell onto my back, because _I have a snowball’s chance in hell_ and _oh my God, don’t see me, don’t kill me, I’ll be good_.

I vaguely hear Mama’s answering snarl before she’s backed to the far corner and wedged behind that one _statue_ that sort of looks like WitherFang. Though my current intention is to _melt into the goddammed floor,_ I just end up startling when a warm weight curls around me instead.

The iron tension of NimbleFoot releases with a sigh. “ _Today’s no-good Silver, sorry I scared you._ _Tomorrow will be better._ ” He follows this with a burrowing ear nuzzle and them I’m getting groomed of all the sap and twigs missed earlier.

He’s wrong. It takes four weeks and half a day to get a Mama reaction more expressive than a snarl.

And . . . well, it’s not like I didn’t have things to work through. Might as well take the time to wrangle my life into manageable _(bullet?_ _)_ points.

Here’s the jist:

One, I am a female called Silver and my Mama is the color of heather. NimbleFoot calls her _Era_. My fur looks like moonlight and my eyes look like the sun- I don’t know if this comes from my father because no one but NimbleFoot likes my Mama and it’s definitely not him. Our Lady makes it the easiest to think and SwiftRunner says it’s because we’re all cursed and without her we wouldn’t have names or complex thought. We are werewolves and that feels… wrong, sometimes. Like, it’s _not_. I have a snout like a wolf, wrestle like a wolf, and howl and grunt and bark _like a wolf_. But . . . I remember cropped hair, apposable thumbs, a love for sweaters, and an appreciation for long books on cold nights. I remember laughing in a language that's so very alien to the throat I own now.

Two, I have lived four whole winters, have claws that don’t slip when I run, and eyes that can follow even the smallest drop of runoff on a dark night. NimbleFoot is the only adult who asks me what _I_ think and is the only one who keeps me company when Mama won’t. I have known Bramba my whole life. Though he is older by one season, I am the one who leads. We find four more hidden passages within a week of the first. NimbleFoot gets a little too good at destroying them.

Three, I can understand prey ( _animals_ ). The _deer_ with the land boats had been singing just as loud as their riders. Despite any prey brought in by our hunters being far too dead for conversations, the experience has me curious enough to seek out one of the rats instead. He tells me ‘ _Leave! Leave! Leave! No pup, just us! Our space, LEAVE!’_ and it’s a pleasant surprise. The _‘Kill, drink, wrap, wither’_ in the walls is not.

Four, I know what things are before I actually _know_ , you know? I’m not sure if the differences of _stalagmites_ and _stalactites_ really gives me an _advantage,_ but nothing is more guaranteed to give Mama a bad day than accidentally saying it out loud. Our Lady’s coal eyes may sharpen, NimbleFoot might grow distant and SwiftRunner might get angry, but Mama’s shutdowns will always hit hard. Alternatively, Mama’s good day is the best day. Her laughter is my favorite of favorite things.

Five, I dream of the hunters when asleep and fight the urge to hum their song when awake. _I was like them._ I saw barely a moment and still know what it’s like to _laugh, smile and live_ _like they do_. If I close my eyes, I see faces _so nearly the same_ that tears prick and _there's not even a reason to be sad._

Six. One day, I will find out why.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All questions will be answered at the end of the next chapter.
> 
> I do not own Dragon Age.

About midway through my tenth summer, the discovery of our newest hidden passageway somehow ends with a talking tree _startling the everlasting shit out of us_. ‘The Grand Oak _’_ seems to like rhyming in the same vein as _'the sun’s a fan of being hot'._ These are slow, convoluted rhymes, occasionally peppered with words with the sole purpose of making the previous statement fit the pattern _._ Bramba spends half the time completely checked out and _it is very much_ _like getting bad poetry from the love child of Dr. Seus and Shakespeare_. But hey, when your greatest source of information is either A.) a werewolf ( _NimbleFoot’s built up a tolerance)_ , B.) one of the wolves or rats ( _much more likely to snap when questioned),_ or C.) mysterious ( _and very unreliable)_ memories . . . well, sometimes you just gotta tolerate long winded trees for a while.

My new friend casually drops the _daily_ _reality of tree possession_ into his introduction _(because that’s what the Elder Tree do),_ calls Bramba a _‘Were’,_ and ends up retelling how a grouse got pinned to its forehead.

_And that’s it. That is the base summary of a good three or so hours of my life._

NimbleFoot shows up eventually and- after an unimpressed rundown on false scent trails _never ending via faceplant to tree_ \- we’re sent off to the den with a swipe to the ears. Briars close the path behind us, shutting off the smell of a black bear and opening the way for Witherfang to slip into the wolfs romping at our heels. The heavy smell of blood and stone has Bramba and I scampering to join the fray already crowding fresh carcasses. Mama, gnawing on a foreshank from a nearby overlook, gnashes her teeth when we pass her by. It’s all very routine and normal and it’s not until we’re all drowsing that I finally clue into what’s been wrong all along. Bramba curls into Bulfa, retelling our day while the older wolf washes his ears. I hear “ _The Tree spoke different, Bulfa! I didn't understand. Silver understood though, she spoke back-“_ and I startle so hard that I headbutt Nimblefoot in the chin.

_He . . . . . . ._

_. . . . . I . . . ._

_How . . . How in the hell . . ._

_HOW DID I MISS THAT_ _YOU CAN’T RHYME IN GROWLS_???

“But of course my voice is not that of thee, you are a Were and I a tree.” The Grand Oak says the next I can manage to sneak out a visit, golden leaves raining with each shake of its crown. Despite being alone as far as werewolves went, the two wolves at my flank were stubborn and much harder to shake. My sudden honor guard hadn’t impressed the old tree much, but there’s a distinct image of _raised eyebrows_ ( _A strip of fur only above the eyes? That can’t be right)_ when I actually _speak_. “I must admit, is the intent to confuse? What is this trickery? A ruse? There were growls and grunts, the last we spoke. Yet your tongue now is not that of born Were-folk.”

“I . . . I was hoping _you_ could answer that actually. What is this _language_? Where does it come from? The Hunters don’t use it and the others don’t like it. _How do you know it_? How do _I_ know it? I’d thought it- I mean . . . that it was from-” A family of flat faces smile at me _, laugh and joke with me_ and- “ _How do I understand you_? Do you remember being a . . . Do you remember things that _never actually happened?_ _Being someone else?_ Having different family? Different friends? _Living someone else’s LIFE?_ Being furless but _not naked and-_ ” The smaller of the wolves leans her weight into me. I press into fur that’s silky and tan.

“Hmm, be thou spirit or be thou soul? Twas mind and body Were thine goal? No tis not so, tis cannot be. There are many a skin more fearsome than thee.”

Spindly branch-like fingers gently wrap and lift until I’m dangling far above the whimpering _“What? No take! No! No!”_ of my companions. The braver of the two nearly catches the fur of my heel and goes sprawling into the moss. Out of deeply ingrained instincts that _bigger means stronger_ , I tuck into myself until I’m small and still. The Elder Tree smells like Our Lady on a stormy day _._ A new word _slams into my brain_ and I nearly jerk into a deadly fall _._

“ _Possession?_ You . . . you think I what? Found some helpless pup and just . . . _took over_? I’m not a _ghost._ ”

“Ghost tis not a word I know. Spirit are we who came to grow. Do thou not remember a self not thine? Tis the fate of all who’ve crossed the gossamer line. Alas, tell this to tree confused. Be thine host born or be it used?

“Used? Uh . . . No, I’m pretty sure I was born. I mean, I certainly don’t remember my newborn days, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have _evidence they happened_. The others _still_ gossip about how Mama didn’t like me much in the beginning, you know? Or about how everyone thought I’d starve until Nimblefoot talked her into feeding me . . .”

“Starved? Tis concerning indeed. Perhaps twas the dying a Soul did heed.”

“Er . . . you just said ‘Soul’ and two seconds ago it was ‘Spirit’? Is . . . Is that the same thing? You say _deer_ , I say _prey?_ ”

It sets me down with a hum and it’s a surprise for my paws to hit soil. Immediately I’m swarmed, and the next moment is spent enduring two wiggling lick monsters. The one who’d missed _my_ ankle had been steadily trying to _gnaw his way through the Grand Oak’s_. Thankfully, the tree had yet to either notice or care about the urine darkening its limb.

“The two be of like cloth but never of same. Spirit the being of Fade, Soul a last ember of forgotten flames.”

_Oh._

“. . . You mean my memories, don’t you? That’s the ember. I thought it might be a Curse thing. That it was some weird side effect and I’d just _skipped over_ the big heavy _presence_ that takes you over and makes you _wild_. The one’s fresh bit just _scream_ when they try to hold on to who they were. They don’t eat, so they starve. They don’t drink, so they die. All this time I thought my knowing _was_ the Curse. That _that_ was why it’s not painful when I remember. But it’s not. _‘Souls’ are already dead_.”

“Tis the first heard of Soul here. Far more doth Spirits draw near.”

“But it’s still the answer, right? It kinda explains everything. The faces, the dreams, the _language . . ._ ”

“Tis the tongue of plenty, claimed by none and uttered by many. If you speak now as you so spoke before, thou could have been of any people, if not more. Where thine Elf, Dwarf, Man? Surely you hailed from some land. The Were were once one such as these. With thine beast they can no longer be. You say they fear these sounds? It is because they were fire, before She was found.”

For a brief moment, my mind stumbles.

Because it’s one thing to ‘ _not like’_ pups randomly spouting nonsense. _It’s another thing entirely to understand it._

I think back, pushing past the label of _‘memory language’_ and finding familiar echoes peeking through more recent experiences instead. It’d been dismissed as a snarl when Swiftrunner’d howled “Cursed Dalish! _”,_ and “Zathrian! How dare he refuse!” _It_ _hadn’t been, had it?_ The new ones cried “End Me! Please, End Me!” and only I’d ever stepped back when they did. _I’d been called an animal that day._ Mama’s “N-no! Monster! Take it away! TAKE IT AWAY!” had never been anything but a way for quiet nights to turn into ‘Bad Days’. _Did she even realize I understood?_

_It’d been there all this time, hadn’t it? God, I’m dense._

“Alas, my knowledge Soul tis now shown. Though of knowledge had tis one still known. If thou tis to end thy languish, thou should seek thine counsel of thy Dalish.” The Grand Oak extends a bough in a flourishing arch opposite to the den. Despite none of the other groups venturing quite as close, I still get a vague sense that it’s near to where those first Hunters had gone. “They passed me by, one sunny morn. On with their halla, till path doth worn. If thou follow thine tracks, thou might find more of what thine asks.”

There are long grooves worn into the forest floor. Given the lingering smells of _smoke, prey, and wood_ , it’s beyond odd that _I’d been here for hours and not once noticed this very obvious path winding into the trees._

Driven by impulse and curiosity, I break off from the old tree and follow the path further then I’d ever dared to venture. Mid-step and . . . and I’m blinking into the breeze, standing with two wolves before the crumpled entrance to a ruin. The Watch Wolf, previously lounging in a leafy patch of shade, jumps like a startled frog.

My first thought is: _I just teleported._

My second is: _I wonder if I’ll do it again?_

I sneak away with Bramba next, because ditching him had sent him sulking and there’s really not much point to changing old habits. He doesn’t see the trail and keeps sniffing right past it until I point it out. We walk headfirst into a mossy stone wall. I point it out again. We crawl out of one of the den’s streams and smell like wet for the rest of the day. And again. It’s well past nightfall before anyone figures out how to get us down from the roof. _And Again._ I get the barest glimpse of fog before bowling straight into Nimblefoot a second into his search for us.

“ _Maybe it’s a tree_?” I tell Bramba on the thirty-second or so attempt, throwing rocks over a carved dirt line and getting disappointed when they don’t vanish into midair. A wolf rolls in the dust about twenty yards ahead. Her lolling tongue is practically an insult at this point. _“GrandOak say that others move too. All It does is talk lots, wave branches . . . you’d think it’d do more, it’s a-”_ A realization has me sighing heavily into the fur of my friend’s shoulder. Right, the _existence of spirits_ is not a subject that translates well to growls. “ _Maybe there’s another ‘other thing’, maybe a tree, maybe not a tree. Maybe it can move things? Maybe we got too close.”_

 _As if spurred by the flaws in my logic, the now five wolves at the head of the path crash through the undergrowth in a very lively round of_ _Chase/Tag/ Wrestle/Play_ _. Not one gets whisked away._

The magic warping spirit is very particular apparently.

Bramba hums, grooming a bur from my coat almost lazily. “ _Wanna hunt mice next? Watch sparrows? We could nap here. The warm is nice._ ” He gets a nip for the disinterest and swats me away with a chuff. “ _Stop that,_ _I don’t wanna land on SwiftRunner again._ _Bulfa say he hunt to the East today. We could- EURGH!”_

And that’s all the warning I get before a yipping wolf romps right into Bramba and I’m sent flying through a bush.

The resulting tumble picks up speed when the landscape shifts to a surprisingly steep hillside and ends when I launch off a low cliff into the river below. I barely hear the distant bark of alarm before everything is wet and concepts like _avoiding rocks_ and _breathing_ become just about all that I can focus on. And though the water is _cold, Cold, so desperately paralyzing,_ after a second hurtle over a small waterfall it becomes low and sluggish enough to drag myself out. By the time I’m shaking out the sodden cling of fur _,_ it only registers _that I’m standing on a bridge_ when a quick ‘ _roll the water out_ ’ maneuver smacks my chin directly into hard board.

The bridge seems to be one of three connecting a small island at the waterfall’s base to various well-worn trails. It’s so completely new ( _which, after months of spontaneous appearances around the den, is actually kind of a shock in itself_ ) that I just drip on the wood for a bit. Then something sweet’s carrying on the breeze and I just pinpoint it as _smoke, prey, food_ before a distant rustle has me scampering up the nearest tree. Three figures stroll into view, the two males laughing and pushing at the squealing female as they pretend to knock her into the scream. The part of me that knows them as _Hunters_ remembers the _fast-sharps_ and draws further into the bark at my back. The part of me that knows them as _kids_ , that’s _not much smaller than they are_ and ‘ _Those are boys, that’s a girl. Oh my God I_ _giggled just like they do_ ’?

Well . . .

I barely even know I’m moving until I’ve leapt through the air like a squirrel, landing solidly on a branch and following through the trees as they wind up nearby hills and under fallen logs and onward through two bent saplings with something bright and hot burning at their tips. The girl hands over her basket of _very good smells_ to the adults waiting there and the grey one that’s _Stone, Grass, Danger_ ruffles the black fur of her head. Together, they continue on into a mess of those _‘land boats’_ and all the various things streaming amongst them _._ The sun filters red through the sails in the canopy, dying them like drops of blood as they skirt the herd of nervous white deer and call greetings to an even rowdier group dunking ‘ _clothes’_ into the icy water of the stream _._ I watch it all, _unblinking, so utterly fascinated_ , until the larger of the boys shoves the shoulder of the smaller, darting away at the resulting cry of outrage.

The girl holes herself against a statue to the side of the land boat where the grey one has vanished, grabbing something I know as ‘ _book’_ and staring at it for several minutes. At the soft swish of _paper_ , my mind helpfully informs me that she’s _‘reading’._

Reaching to the side to grab an almost comically large branch, I _jump out of my skin_ when she sends a gentle light streaming from the end, scowls, puts it down again, and scratches something into the book with a feather. The grey one emerges, grabs _another_ branch and then there’s a beautiful green vine’s lashing around a broken column. Mimicking the swing, the girl _beams_ when a much smaller vine wraps around the first. I stare- _because what in the everlasting hell?-_ and wonder if maybe, _just maybe, this_ is what’d that whole _’seek thine counsel of thy Dalish’_ thing’d referred to. My eyes cut to the book. The girl had set it on a low table before following the grey one to the enticing smells of _hot, food, meat_ nearer to the center of the boats. Vaguely, I can hear the _twang-shnaaap_ of the boys sending _fast-sharps_ into trees with sticks wrapped in string.

It’s a fairly distant sound.

_I could probably make it._

My descent is careful and silent. The light is waning and the faint glow of the _bright-hots_ hung in the trees isn’t enough to be spotted by what very few figures still linger nearby. The closest two ( _who’d spent an hour striking wood into figures)_ hop from their boat and meander past me with happy lyrical chatter _._ I pause in their shadow, then relax when nothing alarming happens. The grey one’s land boat is not particularly far in- my claws hit soft hide within seconds. And yeah, _it’s exciting._ Because while finding out I’m a _‘soul’_ had been a very defining moment, _this could actually tell me what that means and-_

The pages in my claws are a mess of _scribbled characters that have no meaning_ and _. . ._ and I _. . . I don’t understand . . ._

A meaty _thwud_ sends me spinning, already spitting and snarling before _it even registers what that means_. I see _red, pain, blood, (No, nononononothimnothim)_ and the wide hazel eyes of the boy beyond and then I’m not seeing anything because _I’m running_. One of the _bright-hots goes crashing_ as I barrel through where it’d been and _everything’s so very hot now, where am I even going?_

 _I run so hard._ Not thinking, barely caring when Hunters shout and lunge and scurry towards the heat. I run until my drying coat is sticky with sweat, until my snout’s lathered with foam and every bit of energy in my small body is fumes _and I still don’t stop because if I do then I’ll . ._. Everything everywhere is _chaos_. White deer stampede past me, nearly missing my head with deadly hoofs as they buck and kick and crash through nearby objects.

_One is as bright as the sun; it leaves a trail of light until it collapses with a haunting scream._

“ _Silver, slow down_!” NimbleFoot snarls, sweeping me from the ground seconds before something long and sharp impales where I’d been. The cry of despair that rises within me morphs into a sharp burst of manic laughter, because NimbleFoot just pivoted _to tear out the throat of a Hunter_ and _oh shit, shitshitshitshitshit. Did that really just happen??_

“ _No! Let me down! I gotta . . . I can’t . . . He . . .”_ I stop with a wimper, if only because the adrenaline is fading quick and all that’s left is _red. Redredredred spraying and cloying and_ s _ticky and_ \- And Nimblefoot looks grim, smelling what’s left unsaid in the thick spray decorating my coat.

So very far behind us, claws still raised as if to tap on my shoulder, Bramba slumps with an arrow in his eye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooo . . . that happened.
> 
> For anyone who was confused about the Elder Tree conversation (because it's amazingly difficult to write a talking tree aparently), here's the basic script of their conversation:
> 
> ET: Yup I speak your dream language. I've never seen a pup use it though, what's that about?  
> S: I remember being someone else.  
> ET: Spirit or Soul then?  
> S: Uh . . . neither?  
> ET: Nah, it's definitely one of the two. Did you take someone over or were you born into it?  
> S: Born, my mom was an asshole to me as a baby.  
> ET: You're a Soul.  
> S: What's the difference?  
> ET: Spirits live in the Fade. Souls are what's left of the dead.  
> S: Ah, that makes more sense than my first theory.  
> ET: You're the first Soul I've seen. Spirits are literally everywhere.  
> S: Nice to have an explanation for the weird dream language though.  
> ET: Yeah, everyone speaks that. Your werewolf buddies probably do too.  
> S: *minor existential crisis*  
> ET: Don't know much more than that, sorry. Dalish do though. They went that way.


End file.
